{"id":347,"date":"2007-08-13T21:24:53","date_gmt":"2007-08-14T01:24:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/sunshine_and_exposition_or_what_we_have_here_is_a"},"modified":"2013-11-18T00:06:39","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T00:06:39","slug":"sunshine_and_exposition_or_what_we_have_here_is_a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2007\/08\/sunshine_and_exposition_or_what_we_have_here_is_a.html","title":{"rendered":"Sunshine and Exposition; or, What We Have Here is a Failure to Communicate"},"content":{"rendered":"

[WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUT “SUNSHINE” IN THIS POST]<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Sunshine<\/a><\/cite> with Sammy. We both thought it was excellent. I was a little worried that it would be a little too scary… this is Danny Boyle, after all. But this movie was more about tension than anything else. One of those movies where when the credits roll, you realize you’ve been leaning forward with your teeth clenched the whole time. “What’s going to go wrong now<\/em>?” “Who’s going to get killed off in an interesting way next?”<\/p>\n

The strongest criticism against the movie is that the last third turns into a slasher flick. Garunya, for instance, was not a fan of this development<\/a>. Ditto for the Avocado of Death<\/a>. Dave T. was more okay with it<\/a>, and I fall more on that side of the fence. But you know, reasonable people can disagree.<\/p>\n

What I don’t<\/em> understand is the Slate Spoiler Special podcast<\/a> for Sunshine<\/cite>. Usually their spoiler podcasts are enjoyable, but this one was really irritating, because the reviewers missed so many plot points. They were confused — why did the airlock suddenly blow up? “Could that have been [Pinbacker]?” one of them wondered. Gee, you think<\/em>? There was also a long discussion about why Capa the Dreamy Emo Physicist had to go into the “bomb” to set it off manually. The reviewers guffawed about this — why would you design a device that had to be operated that way? How silly! Ha ha! Too true! And while we’re on the subject, I never could figure out why Slim Pickens ended up riding the bomb down in Dr. Strangelove<\/cite> either. Stupid Air Force and their stupid bomb designs!<\/p>\n

This has got to be one of the most frustrating aspects of storytelling, particularly SF. You get one chance<\/em> to tell your story. If your audience misses a detail and gets confused, tough luck. I know that if I were the screenwriter for Sunshine<\/cite>, I’d be in a sputtering rage. “But — but — the computer was broken<\/em>! We had a ten minute<\/em> scene about that! With a nasty death-by-coolant to drive the point home! Gaaaah!” Sadly, you can’t run around the country explaining to every indvidual reviewer and audience member how they got it wrong.<\/p>\n

Although with enough forum sock puppets, you can sure give it a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ha ha! Too true! And while we’re on the subject, I never could figure out why Slim Pickens ended up riding the bomb down in Dr. Strangelove<\/cite> either. Stupid Air Force and their stupid bomb designs!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":849,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}